-Roughly 90% of all child support dollars are paid from fathers to mothers-The mother is under no legal obligation to spend the money on the children-We have found that who gets the children is by far the most important component in deciding who files for divorce-Keep in mind that getting custody not only determines which parent has their children ripped away from them, but that because of the child support system the children also often come with a hefty payment stream the ‘winning’ parent can spend however they want

There is a ton of other data from the article, but people can just consume it instead of me trying to pick it all out.

My wife found another engineer to exit with before she ditched me. I am pretty cynical right now, but I can't help but think that finances are a large part of the incentive for her to leave. She gets his salary plus potentially 30% of mine OR can use the 30% as leverage to exit with more of the estate.

I am sure this has been discussed before on the forums, but I was wondering what everyone thought of this and how typical it is. Are the Mr. Wonderful exits generally motivated by financial reasons or are they generally more limerence/infatuation-induced?

My wife hangs around divorcees and other people catty toward their husband so my guess is that they educated her well on all of this prior to the maneuver. Her mom is also an ex paralegal who probably has piled on things a bit.

What I can tell you is that if you get 50/50, your child support obligation TO the mother will be minimized. That will also mean you are spending more money on the kids yourself. One of the main differences is that you get to choose how that money is spent.

The child support system is simply another name for alimony for high earners. I believe you fall into that category.

Ask yourself this question: Should the kids have a very disparate lifestyle when going back and forth between the two homes?The laws on the books are because folks asked themself this question. Then special interest groups spent time and money making sure their opinion was heard.

Yes, the financial pay-out is a huge incentive to NJs in engineering divorces. It certainly was in mine. I don't think Mr W. matters much in the NJ's financial calculation unless he is poor and she wants to be his sugar-momma.

You have to understand the child-like mentality of the NJ. They are doing something bad (adultery and breaking up the family), but it's really all your fault. And because those terrible sins are all your fault, they are justified in treating you worse than the Devil to punish you. Treating you horribly includes stealing your children and all your money.

My NJ is a lawyer and 3-4 years before the separation she started threatening me with divorce, and one of her threats was how much money she was going to get from me (she had apparently run the CS calculator, because she had exact numbers). Then I began to hear from one of my children how "we are going to get rid of you, and move into a big house with a pool."

"You have to understand the child-like mentality of the NJ. They are doing something bad (adultery and breaking up the family), but it's really all your fault. And because those terrible sins are all your fault, they are justified in treating you worse than the Devil to punish you. Treating you horribly includes stealing your children and all your money. "

--- LOL. EXACTLY what my EX did to me. Now coming up on 8 years later-- I'm @ 6 figures, have my S16 pretty much exclusively, and she is living with a BF and deal with DM. We rarely talk, and when we do she flips out. I still try to be cordial-- I once loved her. I think my happiness is her kryptonite. The money train is ending soon to her...light @ the end of the tunnel.

for starters? Equal pay would be an area of focus. But you don't get equal pay unless you address a whole other litany of things.

I clearly don't have the answer. But if there was an easy answer, it would have been done already. It also doesn't benefit the incumbents (old white men) who also look a surprisingly lot like the legislative branch of government, so not much hope this will be addressed in the next 20-30 years.

I just don't think the end of a marriage is the place to right a wrong on a micro level. Even on case by case basis, you will get different beliefs on how things should be distributed.

I look at it as a subsidy, which in unto itself is inefficient. But again, that goes back to larger issues at hand - ie taxes. the children are best served by having both parents support them, but because a marriage took place, the government now outsources that demand onto private citizens. Instead of rewarding the mother for any sort of earned income, they incentivize her to stay on subsidies as much as possible. But again, it goes back to large, systemic issues that need to be address in concert, the divorce process is just one facet of that.

Just my 2 cents in the sea of dollars.

But this is also a country that can put you in jail and bankrupt you for taking care of your health.

If we are going to wave the magic wand, here we go:TLDR:Address equal payAddress tax systemAddress healthcare for citizensAddress the legal system - judicial (domestic situations)End the war on drugs, refocuse those efforts on social services to help citizens

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